Scott Allison, 41, knows the value of mentors for recruiting,
retaining, developing and motivating his 44 employees. "Every
time we've done an employee survey, mentorship has popped up as
an interest and a need," says the president and CEO of San
Francisco-based national independent communications firm Allison
& Partners.

Allison's appreciation for mentoring dates to the early days
of the 4-year-old company. Back then, however, the firm didn't
have enough resources to establish a formal mentoring program;
there weren't enough senior people to supply mentors to
everyone who was interested. Allison decided to allow for informal
mentoring, where employees got to choose their own mentors. That
method, he figured, made the most of the mentoring resources he
had. The approach worked well enough that today, even though
Allison has enough senior employees to designate mentors, he still
uses the voluntary program.

Mentoring's value is well-established. It helps recent hires
acclimate to corporate culture, and it allows experienced workers
to pass on their accumulated expertise. Mentoring also benefits
mentors and aids in succession planning.

There is more than one way to mentor an employee, and one of the
major divergences is between programs that select and assign
mentors to individual employees and those that let employees choose
their own mentors. Bigger firms generally assign mentors. Some even
use computerized mentor-matching systems, an approach that is
faster and more objective than more personal techniques.

Allowing employees to pick their own mentors has some important
advantages. In addition to being a good solution for
resource-constrained small firms like Allison & Partners,
self-selection helps ensure a good fit between mentor and mentee,
says Twyla Cummings, a professor at Rochester Institute of
Technology in Rochester, New York, and a mentoring expert.
"Personalities have to fit," she stresses.

Self-matching also allows employees to tap external resources.
Allison was stumped by one employee's request for a female
mentor. "When she described the person she wanted as a mentor,
I didn't feel we had a person like that in the company,"
he says. Allison introduced the employee to a woman he knew from an
entrepreneurs group, and the two agreed to establish the mentoring
relationship.

When mentors are assigned, each mentor is typically matched with
only one person. When mentors are selected by employees, however,
it's not unusual for a single mentor to be seen as an
attractive advisor by more than one person. This can help maximize
the value of a company's most effective mentors, says
Allison.

Self-selection may have risks and limits as well. Employees may
pick the wrong mentors, says Rene D. Petrin, president of Chestnut
Hill, Massachusetts, mentoring consulting firm Management Mentors
Inc. Optimally, a mentor is someone who can help an employee
acquire the skills, contacts and knowledge necessary to reach
long-term career goals, Petrin says. That's not necessarily the
person an employee will select.

"Employees tend to look at the person who's most
powerful, and who they know, instead of broadening their thinking
to include where they want to go, what they need and who is the
best person that can help," Petrin says.

Training can help. Educate employees on what makes a good
mentor, what mentoring can do for them, and how to make the most of
the relationship. Experts also advise training mentors, which
Allison plans to start doing soon.

However informal or well-organized your mentoring effort, make
sure you don't discourage the spontaneous mentoring
relationships that spring up when a veteran employee voluntarily
decides to take someone under his or her wing. Says Cummings,
"That's mentoring at its best and strongest."

Mark Hendricks writes on business and technology for leading
publications and is author of Not Just a Living.